The Exchanges

Q I got you. By the way, I love Robert dearly. You know, Nick and Mickey are some of my favorites. Three great investors there. Dude, massive congrats. Why was now the time to do it, by the way?

A Yeah, and you know, it's quite interesting because Deal has been a profitable company for three years now, so we've been generating cash, which is always a great thing to do, and we haven't needed investment for quite a long time. I think there's a couple of things here that were very critical for us. First, We've been pretty aggressive on the M&A front, you know. Uh, I think we've done about 13 acquisitions, which really helped us grow really fast, uh, build new products, bring amazing funders in, and really kind of take over a big part of the global payroll market share. So, you know, bringing in from new fresh capital and, you know, resetting the valuation is also something that's important to the actual value of the company. The second part is, like I was telling you, I think, uh, Miki and Nick are some of the best investors in the world, and, uh, I wanted them involved in the business for a very long time, so, uh, you know, them wanting to invest with the Coatu team, with the A-Sixteen Z team was a great opportunity, and it just made sense to, to kind of go for it when they came with the offer.

AI assessment note: “them wanting to invest with the Coatu team, with the A-Sixteen Z team was a great opportunity”

Q I got you. By the way, I love Robert dearly. You know, Nick and Mickey are some of my favorites. Three great investors there. Dude, massive congrats. Why was now the time to do it, by the way?

A Yeah, and you know, it's quite interesting because Deal has been a profitable company for three years now, so we've been generating cash, which is always a great thing to do, and we haven't needed investment for quite a long time. I think there's a couple of things here that were very critical for us. First, We've been pretty aggressive on the M&A front, you know. Uh, I think we've done about 13 acquisitions, which really helped us grow really fast, uh, build new products, bring amazing funders in, and really kind of take over a big part of the global payroll market share. So, you know, bringing in from new fresh capital and, you know, resetting the valuation is also something that's important to the actual value of the company. The second part is, like I was telling you, I think, uh, Miki and Nick are some of the best investors in the world, and, uh, I wanted them involved in the business for a very long time, so, uh, you know, them wanting to invest with the Coatu team, with the A-Sixteen Z team was a great opportunity, and it just made sense to, to kind of go for it when they came with the offer.

AI assessment note: “First, We've been pretty aggressive on the M&A front... The second part is”

Q You're profitable. Is that a strategic decision? Other players in the space are not.

A I think Our principle. So I think I told you this before, but when we raised our Series A, and maybe you can ask Anish about this, we had raised four and, 4.3 million dollars in our seed round. We showed up to our Series A pitch meeting with Andreessen's team, having burned, I think, 400 K a year and a half later. Um, so what I'm trying to say here is, as a funding principle, we've always favored sustainable growth, right? So What's important for me is for the business to be sustainable. Overgrowth. And then if we can grow as well, amazing. And the reason for that is if I'm a company in HR and I'm burning three hundred million dollars a year, I really, as a customer, I really would want to put my team on that platform because the uncertainties behind it is pretty big, right? And for me, what's most important is to have a long-term partner that can really scale with me. You know, one thing that's interesting in our go to market is as we grew, we started signing like four or five years deals, right? Or even seven years deals. Uh, because payroll is something super stable, something you invest in, not something you change every year, right? It's not the type of software that you want to change on a yearly basis. And being able to show super strong financials where you're like, hey, we're 15, 17% EBITDA. We're generating profit. We've been generating profit for three years. It's su…

AI assessment note: “as a funding principle, we've always favored sustainable growth, right?”

Q Totally get you. Can, can I ask you, when you think about building out the sales team, What's been the biggest lesson for you and how you've done it successfully? It is a fricking hard part to scale.

A One thing I always tell early stage founders, um, that we did really well, actually, and really helped us, because if you think about deals revenue split today, 50% comes from the US, a little over 35% comes from Europe, and the rest is that kind of rest of the world, and we're growing all parts. One move we did pretty early on is hire salespeople in different geos pretty early on. Uh, just to understand the market. So instead of having like a lot of salespeople just in one country, like hiring a few salespeople into other countries and kind of say like, go and figure it out was really helpful for us because it really helped us ramp up across all markets really fast and having a strong understanding of what's going to work, what's not going to work and how we should reshape our strategy. For example, we launched Japan two years into the business and like, it didn't work for the first year and a half. And then eventually we changed country leads. With all of the learnings from the first one, and now it's doing really well. Right. And all of this kind of happens in parallel where like a lot of people are like, yeah, it's going to defocus you. You shouldn't be doing that. I'm like, hire a sales guy and see if he sells or if she sells. And if they do amazing, you can ramp up and hire more of them. If they don't, then it's fine. You'll let them go and change them.

AI assessment note: “One move we did pretty early on is hire salespeople in different geos”

Q Yeah, I totally agree. Um, you've recently made some acquisitions, speaking of, kind of, like, product expansions. Talk to me about how you think about making acquisitions, because I'm just intrigued. Why do you acquire versus build internally? What's that decision making?

A Yeah, I think a few things. One, it's amazing to have a grand entrepreneurs that are very passionate about what they're solving and telling them, hey, like, first, here's 15,000 customers, right, from all different segments that we can sell into your product and help us get better. Second, usually what the companies we acquire are doing is very hard, right? So we acquired, for example, Legopad that did US immigration. They actually did my own O-one visa. That's very, very specialized. It's very hard to do. And taking this immigration product now to 26 different countries. Like, we can help you hire someone on their visa and get them the visa in 26 different countries. Like, this is really, really, really hard. And that expertise is super valuable for us. Or if you look at Paygroup, which was, like, a bit of a crazy acquisition because they were a public company in Australia, they do payroll in, like, all the way back themselves. Like, good luck running payroll in, like, China, India, Japan, yourself, right? Like, this is where we went from Hey, we're working with local people that help us run payroll on our own entities to deploying our global payroll product and say, bringing everything in house. And those guys are freaking amazing at it. And we're here for it.

AI assessment note: “what the companies we acquire are doing is very hard”

Q What happens when you have someone who's okay? They're good, but they're not amazing, but they're actually in a role where you kind of need them and it's a pain in the ass to remove them. It's a pain in the ass to replace them. I'm, I'm literally using you as a big brother here. What do you do then where it's like they're good, but not great?

A I think the one thing that would be the defining characteristic for me at that stage is how much do they care and how hard do they work? I would hire someone that works really hard Over someone that's really smart any day of the week, right? So if you work really hard and if you care, you know, you, I will be there to help you scale. I'll be there to help you grow and we'll have the infrastructure for you. Uh, and if you have that outcome, you know, stay with us for the rest of time, right? If you are like this and you don't care and you don't work hard, then you probably will find a better place somewhere else.

AI assessment note: “how much do they care and how hard do they work?”

Q What's your Yoda knowledge from Ben? I gave you mine from Mickey. Come on.

A Oh, Yoda knowledge. I hope he doesn't get mad at me for saying that one. Uh, but in his mind, in his mind, most chief marketing officers are not good. The truth is I actually agree with him. And for a while I was looking for a CMO with this experience, that experience, that experience, and what I've realized is, like, the best CMOs I've encountered over the last few years are the ones that are just able to be so much more first principle into understanding what's going on and going really deep into the data instead of being super superficial. Uh, and you don't usually get that from a traditional CMO background. So, like, the contrarian stance me and him have kind of developed is that Your CMO should be an engineer.

AI assessment note: “Your CMO should be an engineer.”

Q like, who should I introduce them to on your team? And you're like, me. And I'm like, no, no, this is like a junior AE job. No disrespect to junior AEs, but like, you're the only CEO who would be that hands-on. Let me, and they said you're the most hands-on CEO they work with. How do you respond when you think about how hands-on you are and your approach?

A So I think being hands-on is very critical for the business as you grow. I think the worst mistake you can make as the company's scale is to be too far away from the business to really know what the problems really are. And I think this is kind of like a cultural point for Dale, right? Top down, all of my leaders are hands-on. And then if my leaders are hands-on, you know, management is hands-on, and the ICs see this the exact same way. So I think culturally, it's always been very important for us as a business. It's always been very important for me. And it really helped me navigate different paths of growth, new products, or even spotting gaps into the organization, right? I think every company had more than 50, a hundred people start having flaws in their designs, in their org, in terms of response time, in terms of how things are happening. And if you are 10,000 feet above, kind of looking, um, looking down at, like, the organization, hoping to figure out what's wrong, it just doesn't really work. Um, so being, actually even being seen by our customers, because it's not just you, right, and our investor, my customers, um, I get a lot that, it's not that we get that many, but I, I get people pinging me about, hey, like, I have a problem with this, et cetera, directly. That really does help me have a better view of, like, what's wrong in the organization on an everyday basis.…

AI assessment note: “So I think being hands-on is very critical for the business as you grow.”

Q Where has he had the strongest opinion that you've disagreed with him?

A Uh, many times. Actually, we disagreed all the time. Uh, I think he hates that story, but, um, the biggest thing he disagreed on with me, which actually was the best decision we ever made as a company, was building up our infrastructure for our Employee of Record product. Basically, the way Employee of Record work is, um, we enable you as a company to be able to hire anyone anywhere without having a local entity. We have local entities all around the world and we employ people on your behalf. As a more risk averse person and, you know, acting CFO at the time looked at the business and told us, hey, if you actually own the infrastructure, you take on so much liability. Let's work with partners, which was how the old school model was. And at the beginning I pushed back and I said, you know, partners They work on Windows Vista. They don't have the same care for customers. They don't understand service the way I think about service, the way you think about service, which is, you know, service of today. It's not going to work. And, you know, when your CFO says like, uh, too much risk, you're like, okay, we'll try. We tried for two months. And then I came back and I said, open the entities, uh, which he pushed back on until he decided not to. And today our employer of record product generates, I think over 25, thirty million dollars a month, right? So, uh, Best decision for the busin…

AI assessment note: “the biggest thing he disagreed on with me... was building up our infrastructure”

Q like, who should I introduce them to on your team? And you're like, me. And I'm like, no, no, this is like a junior AE job. No disrespect to junior AEs, but like, you're the only CEO who would be that hands-on. Let me, and they said you're the most hands-on CEO they work with. How do you respond when you think about how hands-on you are and your approach?

A So I think being hands-on is very critical for the business as you grow. I think the worst mistake you can make as the company's scale is to be too far away from the business to really know what the problems really are. And I think this is kind of like a cultural point for Dale, right? Top down, all of my leaders are hands-on. And then if my leaders are hands-on, you know, management is hands-on, and the ICs see this the exact same way. So I think culturally, it's always been very important for us as a business. It's always been very important for me. And it really helped me navigate different paths of growth, new products, or even spotting gaps into the organization, right? I think every company had more than 50, a hundred people start having flaws in their designs, in their org, in terms of response time, in terms of how things are happening. And if you are 10,000 feet above, kind of looking, um, looking down at, like, the organization, hoping to figure out what's wrong, it just doesn't really work. Um, so being, actually even being seen by our customers, because it's not just you, right, and our investor, my customers, um, I get a lot that, it's not that we get that many, but I, I get people pinging me about, hey, like, I have a problem with this, et cetera, directly. That really does help me have a better view of, like, what's wrong in the organization on an everyday basis.…

AI assessment note: “I think being hands-on is very critical for the business as you grow.”

Q What's your Yoda knowledge from Ben? I gave you mine from Mickey. Come on.

A Oh, Yoda knowledge. I hope he doesn't get mad at me for saying that one. Uh, but in his mind, in his mind, most chief marketing officers are not good. The truth is I actually agree with him. And for a while I was looking for a CMO with this experience, that experience, that experience, and what I've realized is, like, the best CMOs I've encountered over the last few years are the ones that are just able to be so much more first principle into understanding what's going on and going really deep into the data instead of being super superficial. Uh, and you don't usually get that from a traditional CMO background. So, like, the contrarian stance me and him have kind of developed is that Your CMO should be an engineer.

AI assessment note: “the contrarian stance me and him have kind of developed is that Your CMO should be an engineer”

Q What have you not invested in internally that with the benefit of hindsight you would like to have done? I think you learn lessons from mistakes.

A Hmm. I think we under invested in our internal tools and processes. I told you, I look up to Nick a lot. And Nick's mantra is build everything. If you own everything, you do everything well. So I don't know if you know, but Revolut builds everything. Um, and I think he's right. I think in many ways, like, uh, software is, a lot of SaaS are not tailored enough to the different applications that we want to build, and owning most of the software makes a significant difference in many different places. But let me give you a very, like, small project that we're very excited about. A very, like, strong example. Um, over the last year, we built our own JIRA-like product internally. So basically, like, ticket management at scale, because being able to route the right tickets to the right person, so let's say you have a problem, you're a customer, you want to talk to payroll, you want to talk to HR, you want to talk to finance, whatever that is, being able to write your own tickets is very critical, right? And, like, no software was really agile enough to To be able to do this. And now, what we're launching, like, this week internally is, like, the ability to just, as a salesperson, as a CSM, whatever, within the company, being able to type your problem, and, like, basically with AI, automatically create the right ticket, automatically routing it to the right person, and cutting the tim…

AI assessment note: “I think we under invested in our internal tools and processes.”

Q I'm not expecting you to name a company name, the founder, but like, take me to one that didn't work. Um, what were the lessons for you from that, that impacted how you think about the playbook?

A I think the ones that didn't work were mainly The ones where we said, why not? Instead of hell yeah. Um, so, you know, they come to us, and they are at the end of the line, they have some revenue, they have something that's adjacent enough for it to be kind of relevant, but not in scope, enough for me to truly care. Uh, and, you know, it's there, so you're like, why not? Uh, and I've learned a lot from this. So, you know, we get a decent amount of acquisition inbound. If it's not a hell yeah, I just don't go for this anymore. Um, and that was like a big lesson for me. And we, you know, we did it once or like, what I will say, we've always managed to make the best out of all of those acquisitions. So if it wasn't for, like, if it wasn't a hell yeah, we still most of the time got really, really great talent out of this that shaped the company in many different ways. Um, but now I won't go through the struggle as much. I will just hire the person if I like them.

AI assessment note: “I think the ones that didn't work were mainly The ones where we said, why not?”

Q Best and worst thing about working with your dad?

A I love working with my dad. Uh, there is, uh, honestly not a lot of negative things with working with my dad. I think the best thing is wholeheartedly trust him. Uh, and he's able to drive a lot of decisions in, in a way that comes with experience that I don't have. Um, I'd say if you want to say one negative thing is like a lot of people have a strong misconception of working with family, at least in the United States, which was like a little weird to me. Um, But most of the people that know us very well, they understand the dynamics between the two of us and how we work. And, you know, the closer you are to us, the more you understand how valuable the relationship really is.

AI assessment note: “I think the best thing is wholeheartedly trust him. ... one negative thing is”

Q Final one. When you look forward, I like to end on a tone of optimism. What are you most excited for, for the next five to 10 years? Like, what is, like, this gives me fucking energy.

A Look, the way I think about Our business, which a lot of people find super boring. I actually think this is why you passed. Not because you don't think there's a lot of, uh, potential into payroll, but because you think it's a boring business. I don't think it's boring because the way I think about this, and this is what like really drives me, right? When I think about payroll, HR, I think about like such significant moment in the life of people. It's where you get your paycheck. It's where you get your, your pay slips, your mortgage letter, your business visa, your payments, right? It's where you submit your expenses. So it's like a place that you interact with all the time in like very unique key moments and events in your life, and it's like super disregarded, right? I've never had someone come up to me and tell me, I fucking love my payroll software. It's the best thing I've ever used, right? And I'm like, when you're in such critical moments of the life cycle of people, right? New jobs, like uncertainty, like you can build such a strong relationship with your end users if you actually care to invest into the relationship you have there. And you can create, going back to brand awareness, I think a very, very strong brand where hopefully one day people will tell you, ah, I fucking love my payroll software. Like, Deal is the place I want to be hired on. It's the place I want …

AI assessment note: “building the first truly global brand that you love as an end user to get paid on”

Q What's the most painful lesson that you've been through, but you're also pleased to have been through because of the lessons?

A We almost had very early on a showstopper on one of our key products. Because one of the person I hired, I knew was the wrong hire. I let them continue for a couple of months too long. I should have been a bit stronger and cut them. They had everything on paper, like big resume, big company is supposed to be really good. So I was like, you know, give them two, three months to figure it out. And, you know, the speed at which we were evolving at and we were iterating and like the big wall that was coming to us, if we weren't going to cut that person, it was a near miss for us, for sure.

AI assessment note: “Because one of the person I hired, I knew was the wrong hire.”

Q I've heard some founders talk about going slow to go fast. There are some things where you need to deliberately reduce the speed to ensure the highest quality. Is there anything that you think you should go slow on?

A It depends, right? Like, uh, when it comes to cells, I don't think you should ever reduce the speed. I think you should always triple down. So that's something that's, uh, to me very important. You know, the hard part about deal is, uh, when you're dealing with global compliance and global compliance is really, really complicated, right? Like it's not just like setting up an ICOI and starting to like, uh, enable you to, to hire some people. It's understanding how do you onboard that person? How do you do compliance? How do you terminate them? How does overtime works in, in France, right? Like where I'm from, which is one of the most complicated, complicated country in the world. And when you do that, you got to do it very, very carefully. And that's why, as we rolled out our products, as we rolled out our Operational infrastructure. You know, we always took the time to do it really, really well, and that's what gave us an edge. So that is kind of slow to go fast, but at the same time, when you've got that figured out, you got to move really fast too.

AI assessment note: “we always took the time to do it really, really well, and that's what gave us an edge”

Q What happens when you have someone who's okay? They're good, but they're not amazing, but they're actually in a role where you kind of need them and it's a pain in the ass to remove them. It's a pain in the ass to replace them. I'm, I'm literally using you as a big brother here. What do you do then where it's like they're good, but not great?

A I think the one thing that would be the defining characteristic for me at that stage is how much do they care and how hard do they work? I would hire someone that works really hard Over someone that's really smart any day of the week, right? So if you work really hard and if you care, you know, you, I will be there to help you scale. I'll be there to help you grow and we'll have the infrastructure for you. Uh, and if you have that outcome, you know, stay with us for the rest of time, right? If you are like this and you don't care and you don't work hard, then you probably will find a better place somewhere else.

AI assessment note: “the defining characteristic for me at that stage is how much do they care”

Q I, I totally get you. You, you mentioned that verticalization. Do you think SAS is bundling rather than going to vertical point solutions? And how do you think about that?

A I love this conversation because I think one of the beauty of dealing the way we've built it is the ability of bundling and unbundling the both together, right? Like if you go into your traditional solution, you come in and they're like, try to feed you everything, right? And they try to sell you everything specifically in HR, right? You gotta be on your HRS to be able to buy the other products. And that's how it works. When you look at deal, you can come, and this is how we've been able to go to enterprise as well, right? Like you come and you can, you can hire one person in South Korea or in Japan, right? In a couple of minutes, if you're Nike or if you're Subway, like some of our customers, right? They're like, you don't need to buy the full HR solution. Like we plug and play with your, your SAP or your workday. We are also then able to introduce you to different products that we have, right? Like, and you start having that suite of product that you're buying over time and like, Getting into the account slowly and surely and showing them where the right people to partner with. And that idea of like being able to like bundle everything if they want to, but also being able to unbundle and do things we're very specialized in at the same time. I find that like super interesting.

AI assessment note: “the ability of bundling and unbundling the both together”

Q in bundling, you obviously have kind of better economics. You get the whole suite for 49 99, versus point solutions, which are kind of 1999 each, and then you end up paying a hundred dollars. Do you think, and they might be nine out of 10 products, and these are seven out of 10 products, but do you think that actually that cost for efficiency on savings will drive bundling?

A 100% because the HR leader who we love is not going to have as much decision power here and the CFO is going to, right? So 100%. So if you combine the idea of bonding, the hard things, right? Like global payroll, EOR, contractors, compliance, immigration services, right? All of the things we do into one product, you know, let's say if tomorrow were to release a performance management tool, it's maybe not going to be the best in the market straight away, right? Hopefully over time it will be. But, right, like, you see if it's going to be happy to have a five or six out of 10, even, not even seven, right, like five or six out of 10, because it's going to cost, cost, and bundle everything.

AI assessment note: “100% because the HR leader who we love is not going to have as much decision power”

Q Do you advise founders always raise at the highest price?

A No, because I think M&A is a very valuable option, a very valuable option, and I think that the higher you are, the harder it is to get done. Um, and it depends what you want in life, and it depends how big your business is actually going to be. I think trying to go for the home run, I'm very glad I did, uh, in terms of like the ambition. We still have a lot of work to do, but I'm very glad that we went for the billion dollar valuation and all of those things. It could have backfired as well. Um, so I think that was much more naive from my part, which worked out. Okay. Um, but I do think that there is some optimization where you need to think about the future of the company and highest valuation does not always mean best outcome for the business and the people.

AI assessment note: “No, because I think M&A is a very valuable option”

Q Do you give people the room to set their own goals or do you micromanage? Cause this is my challenge, which is like, unless I micromanage, they don't fucking run fast enough.

A At the very beginning, depending on the size of the company, I think you shape leaders and they shape you as well into, like, building a relationship where, like, they're able to run on their own. If, for example, my head of product, Pierce, you know, at the very beginning, he came from a very different type of organization. Now, you know, he knows what I'm going to say before I even say it, right? So, like, I kind of fully trust him on running that really well. Um, so I think it's a mix of both, right? Like, when you're onboarding someone, like, it's important to be there for them, specifically on, like, a remote base. As you grow and as you hire very, very strong people, I think, you know, you tend to be a little less micromanaging. Now being in the details is very important, right? Like first you don't need to be in the details and annoy the people you work with. You can just understand the details and then stand, you know, say something when you have something to say and not just say it all the time. And that usually helps.

AI assessment note: “so I think it's a mix of both, right?”

Q Tell me your father, I didn't know that actually. How do you make it work with your dad?

A You know, we're very tight as a family, you know, uh, the way I was raised, we're very, very close. And, um, I think we have very different skill sets, right? Like I'm much more aggressive. Make decisions a lot faster, and much more product, and maybe a bit more Americanized in many ways, right, where I understand the value a bit more, because I studied in the U.S., where he's much more traditional French, like CEO of a public company. One of the reasons we are a bit, um, positive now, right, since September, which was one of the big announcements we had, is that in January, he looked at the market and he said, uh, uh, hiring frees everyone. You got to work on your workbooks and what you're doing, and I want us to be a bit that positive by the end of the year. And we're like, Okay. And it ended up being like one of the best decision of the company, right? So I think we have a very, very different skill set, but at the same time, very complimentary. And I think there's a lot of like mutual respects where he understands, you know, I'm also here to make my mistakes. So, you know, his favorite thing is like, you'll see in three months I was right, or in six months I was right. And he's right most of the time, to be honest. He's a very special person on this. He's very, very strong, and I'm learning a lot from him. And, um, you know, at the end of the day, I think the trifecta of li…

AI assessment note: “we have very, very different skill set, but at the same time, very complimentary.”

Q What is the sign that you should transition to Build OWN?

A I think a couple hundred percent year-on-year growth plus profitability is a good sign. When we started, here's another example, right? Like, building your own payroll engine, like I'm geeking to you about earlier, is like a very bold move, right? It's something that you go like, why would you do this, right? Like, Payfit is a unicorn in France, just doing payroll in France. Gusto is a unicorn in the, Decacorn in the US, just doing payroll in the US, right? So, building our own internal infrastructure, From ground up with the ambition of rolling out the hundred plus countries is like something that most people will look at and go, you're a little crazy. And that's true. It's like a very crazy play actually. But you know, when you're four years into the business, you're profitable, you're on path to grow really fast. You kind of have some decisions to make, right? Like how big of a company do you really want to build? Can you make a lot of those long-term plays that you think are going to be significant for the value of the company and for your customers? And that's where we kind of got into a place where we're like, okay, Do we want to be an acquisition outcome with a great one, two, three products? Or do we want to actually own the rails, like the actual, like, be as close to the metal as possible in a way that no one has ever done before? Uh, and I think you can only start ma…

AI assessment note: “a couple hundred percent year-on-year growth plus profitability is a good sign”

Q Did you ever get high on your own supply? We mentioned both being young there. I was a little bit younger than you. I definitely got high on my own supply at 21, 22, thinking I was the shit.

A Maybe. Um, I think there is a moment where you're like, hot shit, everybody wants to invest, you're getting term shits left and right, where you start being, ah, inconsiderate. But I actually kind of like have gone through enough cycles now, although it's not been exactly a long time, where I, I actually kind of regret not having been, um, some of those times slightly maybe nicer or more considerate than I was. You know, I see it with some of my friends or some people that are raising, like, crazy runs right now where my take is, like, at some point, everything that goes up must go down. And at that point in time is when you start thinking, ah, maybe I shouldn't have done this or I shouldn't have done that, right? And I think, um, I don't think I was that intense on this. I'm sure, I'm sure some people might think I was. If it was, it was never intentional. I'm sorry. Uh, but I, I do think that, uh, That over time it happens to founders that build companies that have significant traction for a short amount of time.

AI assessment note: “I think there is a moment where you're like, hot shit... you start being inconsiderate”

Q I've heard some founders talk about going slow to go fast. There are some things where you need to deliberately reduce the speed to ensure the highest quality. Is there anything that you think you should go slow on?

A It depends, right? Like, uh, when it comes to cells, I don't think you should ever reduce the speed. I think you should always triple down. So that's something that's, uh, to me very important. You know, the hard part about deal is, uh, when you're dealing with global compliance and global compliance is really, really complicated, right? Like it's not just like setting up an ICOI and starting to like, uh, enable you to, to hire some people. It's understanding how do you onboard that person? How do you do compliance? How do you terminate them? How does overtime works in, in France, right? Like where I'm from, which is one of the most complicated, complicated country in the world. And when you do that, you got to do it very, very carefully. And that's why, as we rolled out our products, as we rolled out our Operational infrastructure. You know, we always took the time to do it really, really well, and that's what gave us an edge. So that is kind of slow to go fast, but at the same time, when you've got that figured out, you got to move really fast too.

AI assessment note: “So that is kind of slow to go fast”

Q Got you. How did you decide that was the right amount, one, and how much early employees took secondaries?

A Uh, the right amount for us, well, the place I wanted to buy cost X, and then I had a couple other things I wanted to get done, um, so it was one, something we felt comfortable with, and second, getting to the amount that the guys that did their own wanted to get to, so there's both of those things at the same time. I mean, it's there, right, they want a certain amount of ownership or put a certain amount of money, and when you're at this stage, like, you know, that definitely is a part of that. How many people did secondaries on the employee side? Um, I can think of, like, 15. Uh, but again, you know, it was, uh, 10% of what they had earned, right? So, like, we didn't want them to be checked out, right? But it was definitely, like, in more, even some of them more than me in the amount side. So, uh, I think they were very happy, and they were able to do a lot of great things, and they're still key leaders at the company that are executing and got dealt to where it is today.

AI assessment note: “How many people did secondaries on the employee side? Um, I can think of, like, 15.”

Q Did COVID as like a general kind of like theme for two years, make it easier for you to scale because everyone was acquiring talent remotely and it was the new normal. Or did it make it harder because it was more competitive, actually, and then everyone could hire remotely?

A Well, you know, we started a company in 2019, right? So right before COVID. So it's hard for me to tell you how different my life was because we were not hiring in 2019 versus 20 20. But I think what we saw is that, you know, the war for talent, this mainly because a lot of companies were growing really fast. So they felt like they needed a lot of headcount to match that, that growth, um, went a little crazy and the salaries that came out of that were a little insane. That didn't help on the sales side on our side, right? Cause like people were starting to look outside of the Bay Area for hiring. So I don't have a really strong answer for that, but you know, COVID for us as a company, um, did two things. One, it helped us acquire like larger enterprise customers that needed a solution much faster because their best engineers was relocating to Croatia and they didn't have an entity there. Uh, but it also like sets the tone, I think for the whole world to look at global talent as a, I can probably do that.

AI assessment note: “COVID for us as a company, um, did two things. One, it helped us acquire”

Q But Alex, good, good answer. Your career in politics. What broke first?

A I used to do support, twenty-twenty-one, and there was a time where there was too many customers. I couldn't do it anymore. I needed to hire someone, and I had not planned fast enough to hire there. So, uh, I struggled for it. Me and Sho were doing support every day until, like, very late. On different time zones to make sure that we get that. And, you know, that was misplanning for me. I mean, again, there's lots of things that break. It depends what department you want to focus on, right? Like when it comes to sales, invest in sales ops much earlier, right? Like we're paying the price of having a, well, now it's much, much, much better, but at the time we paid the price of having not a perfect sales force that was easy to use, right? So like there's tons of stuff that break. It's just a matter of focus.

AI assessment note: “I used to do support, twenty-twenty-one, and there was a time where there was too many customers.”

Q Dude, after 13 acquisitions, you do build a real nose for deal making, and you're a deal maker. Um, I love you for many reasons, but you're a brilliant deal maker. What have been your big lessons on how to price a company when you're buying it? How to incentivize founders with re-ups, with stock, with cash comp? What are those lessons?

A Yeah, I have one founding principle on this actually, who came to me from my father. Um, so my father in his past life did over 50 plus M&A. That's actually how he grew his business. And One thing he taught me on deal making was the only way to get a great deal done if, if both parties come out of the equation five years later saying, we're happy this deal was actually happened. So structuring the deal in a way that's fair for both sides, not even if you have the upper hand, right? Making it in a way that like you look back on this and say, hey, you know what, as the founder of the other business, I'm so happy this deal went through is the most important part. So whether it's on retention package, whether it's on, like, how many people from the team you keep, whether it's on, like, how brutal you are about the integration, like, a lot of the things that go there need to be aligned so that you're optimizing for both sides to be really happy about the deal. And it's not obvious because, like, a lot of those negotiations, transparently, like, we have the upper end as the company that's buying, right? So, uh, you, we could be assholes and be like, Whatever, you know, I'll just get the best deal possible. But sometimes we'll over optimize on like the outcome of the acquisition down the line versus the best deal we could get.

AI assessment note: “I have one founding principle on this actually, who came to me from my father.”